


Widow's Walk

by swooning



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will has many pet theories about Helen; this is one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Widow's Walk

She should have been grieving, and she wasn't. Will watched her, looking for signs that the truth had struck home at last. He wondered how long it would take, and whether he would live long enough to see it happen. 

"No destination in mind," Druitt had said before vanishing that last time. Surely Magnus knew these were his final words to her, ever. Although perhaps it was safer to say that John Druitt's last words to Helen Magnus were uttered before he took the dark entity back into himself to save them all. Once he resumed that mantle of hatred and violence, he was already lost to her again. And it truly seemed that now he was lost for good. With no destination in mind, Druitt would never arrive, he would never coalesce. And as far as Will knew, Druitt couldn't change his mind about it after he had disintegrated, because while in that state he had no mind. If he teleported and didn't first tell his body where to reassemble itself, he would simply cease to be. 

The similarity of his death to Ashley's was not lost on Will. He thought the parallels might be lost on Magnus, though, as she didn't seem to have recognized yet that John's selfless act was in all probability his last. 

Will knew that Magnus and Druitt had never been married, but it had often occurred to him that she was a widow all the same. It was one of his pet theories, one of many background projects his mind was working on more or less constantly. The ideas he only brought forward to examine late at night or on long solo drives. 

Many of these ideas revolved around Magnus, because she was unique. Not just "unique in a sense" or "no two patients are exactly alike". She was a genuinely unique subject. No precedents, no basis for comparison to other cases. A woman who had lived - in her apparent physical prime - for over a hundred and fifty years. A century and a half of experiences, interactions, observations. Of mistakes, and learning from them. Will often wondered about cause and effect; was it Magnus's driving curiosity about anything new that had enabled her to survive so long without going mad? Or was that curiosity itself part of her defense mechanism against the harsh and tedious passage of time? 

She was unique, but Will had to start somewhere in deciding how to think of her. And he had long thought of Helen as a widow, a mourning spouse subject to the difficulties most widows face as they journey through their grief. Denial, he had seen from Magnus in spades, and anger most certainly. Most widows just didn't have the added complication of their dead loved one coming back during the "bargaining" stage to advocate for himself. Asking for cures, and seeming restored. Seeking and usually failing to redeem himself, and always fostering hope where hope had no business to be. John had died before but he had always returned, causing Magnus to disregard her own logic where his life and death were concerned. Now she was conditioned to expect Druitt's resurrection. So even though Will could not believe John would ever resurface to trouble them again, he knew Magnus kept that spark of hope in her heart. And he worried it might one day be the breaking of her, of this extraordinary woman who had survived so much that most people would consider far worse than lost love. 

It always came down to love, didn't it? And love was so often fraught with these same ironies and injustices. All the males of Helen Magnus's acquaintance were smitten with her to some degree, and Will could think of at least two who were - or had been - in love with her. But Helen had spent several lifetimes in mourning for the man she could never have, the one she never got to marry. A man who had proven himself unworthy of her again and again, even coming back from apparent death to do so as if he hadn't made the point clearly enough the first time around.

A wild characterization leapt into Will's mind...Miss Havisham meets Emma Peel. Somewhere between a moldy, rotting wedding gown and a skintight black leather catsuit, there dwelt Helen Magnus. Kicking ass and taking names as she waited and waited for her lost love to return to her at last. Sometimes when he did return, she kicked his ass, too. 

Will would lie in bed some nights, twisting his notions from side to side and polishing them, and hope he never accidentally blurted out the widow theory to Magnus. She would probably not take kindly to it. On the other hand she might thank him for his keen insight. With Magnus, you never knew. That was just one of the many things Will admired about her. 

Druitt was gone now, but Will suspected Magnus was probably lying awake in her own bed, turning around her own theories in her mind. How John might well have re-materialized in some location he often went to, something that was in mind without his realizing it; and then he would have taken himself far away to keep the monster inside him from hurting anybody else. How she might contain the murderous entity if she ever got another chance to extract it. How she could contrive, through whatever means, to bring John back not just to life, but to her life. Even before he knew Magnus well, Will thought of her tower perch as a sort of widow's walk. She might be up there pacing even now, waiting for the flash of inspiration that could signal John's next return. 

Further irony, Will recognized. Because hope is usually a desirable and beneficial state of mind, yet he wanted so badly for Magnus to give hers up. He loved to see her smile, but at the moment he wanted nothing more than to see her face shrouded in depression. That healing cocoon of depression that must be endured before the patient can break out and move on. The crucial period when all the truth finally sinks in, all the bargaining has failed, and the last spark of denial masquerading as hope has flickered and died. Only after that can the patient start to think in a healthy way about what comes next.

He wished all that for Magnus, and he tried to tell himself he wished it only for her benefit. That his interest was that of a professional, a colleague and a friend. She needed to grieve and reach closure, he could argue to his conscience. It would even be true. But ultimately, Will knew himself far too well for that sort of self-deception to work. 

Will loved to help people, but in this instance he knew his motivation was selfish. He longed to see Magnus sink, because he longed to be her lifeline. He wanted all hope of Druitt's return to be irrevocably crushed, because only then could Helen ever look at any other man and consider even the possibility of love. 

And it always came down to love. 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at sanctuaryfiction.net


End file.
